No, it is not the eye chart that was patented in 1938, but contact lenses. It really has been over 70 years that contact lenses have been in regular use. But that is not the beginning of the story. In 1508 Leonardo Da Vinci wrote in his Manual D, Codex of theEye , about submerging the eye in a bowl of water to improve vision. Not practical but a good observation. It was 1887 when F E Muller, a glassblower, developed the first hand blown contact lenses. It is said that they could only be worn for 2 hours at a time. And then this patent from 1938 was a huge improvement in lens size and functionality. Although still made of glass, they were the forerunner of the modern contact lens. See it at Google Patents here.